The Inquiring Mind; User Friendly Computers

from the center for telecommunication services the university of texas at austin this season inquiring mind produced by public station in association with the news and information service at ut austin these discussions examining ideas and activities of a major university community yes kathy cover just like rabbits computer seem to be proliferated their fan in elementary schools businesses and homes for those who were intimidated by the computer terminal there is hope dr dahl fast professor of psychology at the university of texas in austin is working on a way to make computers user friendly with me isn't easy man city ut austin news service and dr fast as our guest how did you first get involved in a study of making computers friendly my original interest in this field came from some other interests i've had in psychology in particular i've been

interested in how people comprehend language and understand complex messages in general and what with this computer revolution that everyone is so aware of these days and with my own attempts to learn something about computers by reading manuals and going to classes i discovered myself having some difficulties in understanding it and i thought here's a place where we might be able to apply some of the knowledge that we learned from some of our other research as well as use this computer systems as a as a place we might learn some new knowledge as well we're really looking at the language that's involved i began being interested in and right now of course once you get into this field do you get interested in other aspects of it but that's still by far the central focus of my own work why do you think there is this computer revolution do you see a day when everyone will have one in their homes like television well i don't pretend to be any more of a

soothsayer in that than anyone else but it certainly seems as though that's the way things are going for most schools in america i suspect will have some kind of a computer in it in them in the near future and if that's true then the children will want to have won and when the children want to have one wide praise and a lot of the homes will have them i think tell us about your study how is it that you're going about examining how people react to the language that is involving computers were many parts of that that were interested in what the part that we chose to look at and again this reflects perhaps on my own experience was to look at novices people who have had no prior experience in dealing with computer systems and who are asked to come in and sit down and read a manual and are given a computer terminal to interact with and so we have we began by studying novices asking them to learn a factual task that particular task we chose was one of learning too enter the right material and edited and

they were printed back out again and so that that's how we began is a difficult the finances of a college campus much too difficult yet that maybe in a few more years wheat we'd get aren't novices from introductory freshman class is typically and there are still plenty of them around so you were dealing mainly with stevens he would be at nineteen years old yes that's our that's our population of people were stunning present like what are you finding out so far well we've burned investigated problems like how should one structure the material as we presented how much new information should one present on any given occasion before there asked to practice it be we've also investigated questions like does it help to learn if one is given an analogy if one is told that the computer and the system that one is learning is like something that one already knows about and what we found out somewhat to my surprise is about

this last factor the analogy factor has not had a very big impact on the speed in and ease with which people have acquired their in their knowledge about computer text processors are word processors that we've been studying we still investigating that but we really thought that would have a big effect on and so far has had a big effect and if i can interrupt myself i'll say that i consider this to be actually to have learned something to learn that it's not so easy to him make computers more easy to learn by giving them analogies there's a lot off a lot of good advice around about how to make learning easier we'd like to know which of this advice is really actually useful in which doesn't count for much how would you go about making analogy me try to get the student to understand a computer by saying is very similar to something else exactly so so him oh and in one experiment that we've done we've presented some tricks with him that is our learners one group of lerner's with some

materials that we thought would help them by virtue of their being analogous another group didn't get it and look to see if we can affect the speed of learning and that way not didn't have such a big effect on the things we've looked at for example the exact form in which the sutton says that they are the commands they're called the materials that they knew to type in an order to give instructions to the computer we've looked at how abstract or concrete those commands of the examples of the commands have to be and that has a big effect on learning is an abstract commands can get away very very much will let's imagine that you have come into my laboratory you're given say a letter a business letter it's already exists inside the computer in your job is to make some crack and sent a task that a secretary or student might have i'm writing a term paper one command that we might ask you

learn would be slated to work in certain line into that existing letter if we give the command and in such a way that says oh inserted after line and nowhere and stands for some line number in that text people tend to have a little bit of a hard time with that the actual command in the manual might be i standing for insert followed by maybe a little letter and standing for the line number and we'll call that an abstract command whereas a command that said insert ten meaning insert after after a lion tamarin some particular point the text is more concrete case although both of them require the subject to generalize to say gee what if i want to insert after line fifty one no i do well i've got to understand the content can generalize the line fifty and so on so there is there's a problem for them in both cases

about how to solve them next in the press the next letter that comes along but there is a generalizing is much much greater in the case would have been here in concrete examples ram an abstract ones as a very powerful effect makes a difference sometimes a factor too in learning time which is pretty significant and so i'm prepared to tell manual writers to stay away from abstract meditation in so far as i can i want to backtrack just a little bit and talk about the physical environment when the students can and are they you know a row of terminals with other people or is it more of an isolated room where they sit and before then they get a keyboard in a tv screen yes we're in a small room with a single computer terminal that is exactly as you describe the keyboard and tv screen and an experimenter in this case he's watching over their shoulder as that person to help that they certainly can but we discourage them

from doing so we're asking them to learn from the manuals are primarily and the other a written materials that are in the computer itself that we give them now of course if somebody sits there in a quandary for five minutes we'll let them ask a question or we have a rule if they look matter look like maybe they're so frustrated they're about to cry which occasionally it happens will certainly give them out and that's the data that we collect we record how often ask for help as well as recording a lot of other aspects of their learning but what causes this frustration and do you find that some people are afraid i don't think it's that so much nowadays most people have had some experience with terminals whether it be is the money machines that you see now in every supermarket they're used to pushing buttons and video games video games read an eye most of our subjects employed video games that's for sure so i don't think it's the fear of a physical device at all it's sur and they get lust they get confused there is it is

definitely a complex system that they're asked to learn and they their frustration in and it comes from well that our subjects are typically pre bright kids and they're used to understanding things and now oftentimes they get lost that's frustrating you're listening to the inquiring mind our guest is dr donald farce professor of psychology at ut austin speaking on his study of user friendly computers i want to get back to the idea of computers being or are hoping to make it easier by relating it to something that people have seen and in some ways as the terminal itself seems different to me and it it's got an element of familiarity because it's sort of like a tv screen you'd normally how have the interactive my tv screen another tele to do anything it just seems like it's a whole new ballgame it's not like a typewriter something really different yes we felt that the people who sell at such a divisive a combination of a something look like a

tv and a typewriter would consider it to be probably typewriter like and the payment would often produce for themselves some the what we would call internal model or belief about how at work that would be analogous to a typewriter well that is appropriate but only so far and it can indeed be quite misleading to think of one of these terminals of the tight as typewriters they do things that are very and typewriter like and that's one of the reasons why we thought that giving them some analogies that we hoped would be better for them would aid or learning i'm still i'm not convinced that we can't and so my students are very convinced that if we go about it the right way will find big effects and so i've given given them the job of doing the hat but so far we haven't we haven't found big effects we found some but they're not huge so really the key at least in your study would be holes

themselves yes as i mentioned that i think's there be a point at which a lot of the materials that are now emanuel's will be in the computers themselves and the principles that we're working with i think will apply whether the manuals on printed pages in the computers or indeed whether they're about computers i think their instructions on how to put together bicycles that are confusing now and that i really see our project is one that general ice is beyond just a computer although that's my simple interest at the moment in the interest of a lot of people would like to revive a manual or have a special man in the seventies yes and that we have done that to some extent for our research purposes we we bought some existing manuals and simplified them simply because in the end the two or three hour period were that we studied each of the subjects in our experiment we couldn't teach them all of the material in the manual and then we also re wrote these manuals to correspond to some of the factors that we were interested in for

example it's abstract concrete or including an analogy or not including analogy so we have rewritten them for research purposes yet abstract notion sound like they're using a lot of abbreviations that part of the problem that it might be we haven't looked at that directly to the extent that the abstract ones are created so the concrete ones in our research just because we like to look at one factor of time paris attacks like burning you're steady is it the industry that interested in another is presently my research is being funded by the army research institute they are interested in this work i presume because they our teaching each day of the very large number of novices to interact with computer based systems we start i mean it seems that there are so many turns that had to be defined do you sit someone down and say okay go to the manual first and get familiar with the terms and then we go unsaid from a terminal

present a stall once we've done both those in different research projects that we have them but carrying out in one of our early studies we asked people to read through the manual first gave them half an hour to do so and then asked them to sit down in front of the terminal we found that we couldn't take the men away from them because they would simply sit there they have to learn very much about half an hour so they interact back and forth with the manual another work were doing we have the manual in there computer and i read it on a computer screen and even some work were measuring me time they spend on each line of the manual by that that the materials in the manual presented a line at a time on the screen in the states self present haitian the subject of pushes a button each time here she is interested in screening in july and we collect the times that they spend on reading each line try know where they get in trouble in the manual and then try and see if that would correspond with where they get in trouble and actually do the work

so we are trying to attack on a number of fronts how important is this definition in terms i mean in some ways it seems like there's no way you can know everything you did you might want to know about a computer that you have to start somewhere and that might not make any difference if i really understand much about it but i can just be brave and sit down and start because you actually learn by doing i guess well i agree with this one hundred percent there they're probably very few individuals in america who understand everything about all facets of computers and just the same way that i might not know a lot about how my carburetor works and my automobile and that doesn't keep me from being a good driver i don't think i need to know a lot about the hardware that is in back of what i'm doing or indeed about the computer programs themselves that the industry is now at such a point where there aren't it is possible to make the language that the

individual uses in interacting with the computer close enough to english with some ending of english we might be able to make these devices such that you don't have to know a lot about what the sides how long is a typical volunteer in dog with the problem does that perry and most of the work that we've done we test our subjects for about three hours or so we feel that we can't really ask total total and that's in one session typically although we have had people come back for review sessions and so on but it's simply a practical matter by large for for us we feel that we in an hour we can't get much done we're not prepared for practical reasons to study declined vigils for weeks at a time so this was a compromise that three hours i want yes how one state going on in which you can do you do it for quite some time in the future we've been doing

this work now for about a year and a half i would say and every time we find out something new we seem to learn through three more questions to ask so it could go on for a while i think now the industry in the computer industry of course is concerned about now says and they're doing their own research out there so it might be that this is a place where industry and academics will be able to get it together and do some collaborative work i'm kind of interested in the commercials and with you saying that the computer industry is interested in the novice it seems like if you watch the commercials we went from sort of fleshy high tech you know maybe an eight kinds of things to owe someone uses a movie character and someone else has won about the professional and it seems like they're trying to dig it get more people oriented that it's it's something that the eye of the average person is going to use then on scientifically they have to sell to yes i think there

is every big university that has computer scientists running the computers is now got one so they're going to sell more computers they got sell them to people like you and me who who are not computer experts and therefore they have to be made such that people like in the community you think your research and study will have santa consequences for the industry will they be examining what you've done and you know perhaps come up with some conclusions that well this is what we need to do that we need to go back and change these parts in the main hall oh there's no doubt that what the people and in many of the computer industries are quite aware of this problem for places like ibm for example have been hired experimental psychologists indeed the graduates of this university and clinton people and studied with me to go help them in this endeavor so those there's no doubt about it that they're aware of the problem and are certainly working on what do you see any college you're steady well my own goal is i'm not

a psychologist and i'm interested in how people learn complex structure of material so my own goal is to try to have a better understanding of how that happens and the fact that i'm interested in it with respect to computers is important but really not the central aspect so as i mentioned before i would hope that we would learn something about how present materials to people who are trying to learn some complex materials that was a good that learning more lessen the pain of what the content of the senate increases the process of learning itself that's correct yes i do think people are someone could offer by how open ended computers are i mean it seems like it soon as you get one set me and stay on that is over that the whole new world there's always more that the computer just has unlimited possibilities and feel like they can ever really master it is whether they're somehow put off that well but i think that's an excellent question and it's

a live that a lot in my own life i interact with the two or three different computers and so too are novices we believe that one of the ways to proceed here is to teach a small amount of the material that will let them accomplish all a lot of what they want to accomplish i think of this kind of like learning in layers letson the first layer teach a few very simple things to do that we'll accomplish that will permit you to accomplish a lot and then you can choose if you wish to do if you want to accomplish the little bit of extra subtleties that the device permits you to accomplish learn some more if you choose not to that's fine to you can get your work done herbert simon at a psychologist at the carnegie mellon now and coined the term satisfy saying we are he says in many ways satisfy sing characters in and i certainly am that way if i can gets something done

and it takes me ten minutes that's fine if i had spent half an hour and learn something new i might be a lookout push it in five minutes but am i willing to go spend a half are right now often i'm not i'm satisfied with doing in ten minutes and i think one of the keys to writing manuals and this is something where we're investigating is what is the impact of layering of this sort and other ways of presenting materials that will stimulate the sudden learners to want to go deeper and what that just usefulness to begin with i think i've talked to people who feels somewhat like i do that sometimes it is his eye so much trouble just enrolled and information when i could do it in another way with the calculator a typewriter and satisfy my needs often you can either i'm not a member of the upper class the things that one should do everything by computers they're there many things that one can accomplish quite well without having trouble yourself i think you get that here's something to get people's fears that if you

don't see it as an thing important and useful and are a lot less likely going to brave it going in and be involved with the next probably driven ones she says get going on to sarin and hooked on use it for every veteran living that there certainly are people that are like latin and there are folks interested in whether or not their personality differences among users that can predict who will be an addict and who will not be this is not an area time personally too familiar with or do you think that as that computers began one more common and more people have been in their homes there we welcome to see the fierce being relieved because people were going to become more familiar or well we sort of have two classes those two or really in sudan and as he really aren't well i think that the general fear will decline in the population that i believe that it was true one at one time but people thought of you at sixty miles an hour you could survive it and we do survive it and as

we learned that we can be the master of this device rather than it being the master of us i think a lot of the fears will decline about the only exposure that children are gaining in school why do you think that will have that when the impact future fear in the need for having computers that are user friendly well as though little kiddos get used to dealing with these devices and that certainly the coming thing for sure i believe in the local school district every school will have a computer in the near future this means the children will be less afraid to sit down and more willing to interact with them in the future of that it takes in a great insight to see that though i guess has been better dental floss professor in the psychology department at ut austin speaking on his study of user friendly computers i get the clever afford inquiring mind you've been listening to the inquiry like a

series of programs about the members of the major university community their ideas and opinions expressed in this programme do not necessarily reflect the views of the university of texas at austin inquiring mind is produced by public station them in association with the news and information service and distributed by the center for telecommunication services all at the university of texas at austin pat this is the longhorn